The Returning (37 page)

He felt happy, just remembering. He looked at his sister and sighed in satisfaction. “So that’s what happened, Phoeb.”

Phoebe crossed her arms. “And I slept through the whole thing.”

“Yup.”

“Billy?”

“Yeah, Phoeb?”

“Thanks for saving Dad.”

Billy nodded, smiled a little. “You’re welcome.”

“And Billy?”

“Yeah?”

“Next time you go save Dad, wake me up!”

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-TWO

Rebekah sat on the floor
of her room, her Book of Shadows open on her lap. She read the words she had written in red ink at the beginning of the summer.

He came home today. He being the one who ruined my life. I hate him and I won’t pretend to be nice to him, even though I know that’s what Mom wants. Like we’re one big happy family—yeah, right! I can’t wait to turn eighteen and get out of here. I don’t know how I’ll stand it for the next two years, unless I can try and ignore these people and keep my head in something good and beautiful. That’s why I need to keep up with practicing the Craft, like Aunt Jo says. She says I’ll only find true peace when I recognize all is one and all is divine and even I am one with the goddess and the god. I can do anything. If I listen to the goddess within me, she will show me the way to peace.

There was more, but Rebekah stopped there. She had read enough. She slowly tore the page out of the book and ripped it up, not stopping until the words were broken into indecipherable pieces on the floor at her feet.

The day her father came home she’d been given a gift and had called it a curse. She didn’t hate him. She loved him and had loved him even then. Part of her had known it, but the stronger part of her had given in to anger and listened to the lies.

She pulled another page out of the notebook and added it to the pile of shredded paper. And then another and another. She didn’t stop until every used page in the book had followed the first, drifting down like leaves dropping off a vine.

When the storm started out on the lake, she thought she had caused it—she and Lena. She thought it was the universe responding to their spell. But when Billy showed up and they all reached the shore, she knew she’d had nothing to do with any of it, and that no matter what Lena wanted to believe, they couldn’t bend the universe to their will. They didn’t have any such power. In truth, she was smaller and weaker than she ever might have believed. Rebekah welcomed that thought with relief.

She pushed the pile of paper into the closet and threw what was left of the notebook on top of it. She’d clean up the mess tomorrow. Standing, she stretched her legs, then turned out the light on the bedside table.

The sun was long gone, and the room should have been dark, but a soft glow rose from the floor beneath the window. Thinking Phoebe must have been playing with a flashlight, Rebekah walked around the foot of the bed to turn it off.

But when she saw what was shining, she said aloud, “What’s that doing in here?” Slowly she knelt in front of the light in the outlet, Billy’s little lamb nightlight. It seemed the perfect picture of peace, the little lamb curled up sleeping in the glow of the light. No wonder kids liked the thing when they saw it on display down at the arcade. She could even understand why Billy wanted it. What kid wouldn’t feel safe, drifting off to sleep while gazing at a picture like that? It gave a person the feeling that there really was peace in the world somewhere.

But then, Rebekah thought, maybe there was. And maybe it was even possible to find it.

Laughter drifted in from the front room, and Rebekah followed it to where Billy and Phoebe sat together in the bay window.

“Hey, Billy?”

“Yeah, Beka?”

“Your nightlight’s in my room.”

“I know. I put it there.”

“Well, why? I mean, I thought you wanted it so bad.”

“I did, and I’m going to take it back someday, but for now I want you to use it.”

Rebekah cocked her head. “How come?”

“I thought it might help keep away the nightmares. With Little Lamb there, the room won’t be so dark.”

“But—” Rebekah started to protest, then stopped herself. “Are you sure, Billy?”

“I’m positive.”

“Well . . .” Rebekah smiled and shrugged. “Okay. Thanks. But let me know when you want it back, okay?” She turned to Phoebe. “Time for you to go to bed, isn’t it?”

The child nodded. “Billy was just about to sing me a good-night song.”

“Oh yeah? How about if I tuck you in tonight?”

She saw Phoebe hesitate. “Will you sing me something?” the child asked doubtfully.

“Well,” Rebekah paused, thought a moment, “yeah. I’ll try to come up with something. Come on.” She held out her arms to Phoebe. “I’ll give you a lift.”

Phoebe jumped up and fell into her sister’s arms.

Rebekah started to turn away when Billy called her back. “Hey, Beka?”

“Yeah, Billy?”

“You have to sing a happy song, remember? We don’t sing any sad songs around here.”

Rebekah nodded. “Don’t worry, Billy,” she said. “I’ll sing something happy.”

“Okay. Good night, Phoebe.”

“Good night, Billy.”

“I love you, Phoeb.”

“I love you too, Billy.”

Rebekah turned again and started to step across the room when Billy’s voice stopped her.

“Beka?”

She looked over her shoulder. “Yeah, Billy?”

“I love you too.”

Rebekah felt something stir inside of her, something that resisted his words. But as she gazed at his open, childlike face, her resistance melted.

“I love you too, Billy,” she said, and she knew that it was true.

Even as she spoke Rebekah heard her father’s footsteps on the stairs. Then Phoebe called out, “Good night, Daddy! Beka’s putting me to bed tonight.”

He came to them, kissed them both tenderly on their foreheads. “Good night, girls. I love you both.”

“We love you too, Daddy,” Phoebe said. “Good night, Mommy!”

Their mother stood beyond the screen door, blowing kisses from the porch. “Good night, Phoebe. Sweet dreams.”

“You don’t have to tuck me in tonight, Mommy. Beka’s going to do it.”

“I can see that. Aren’t you lucky?”

Rebekah felt Phoebe’s arms tighten around her neck in a long hug. Rebekah squeezed back. “Come on, you,” she said, “let’s get you in bed. You have the nightlight to help you sleep now.”

“And you have the nightlight too, Beka.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“And a happy song.”

Rebekah laughed lightly. “Yeah, that too.”

She kissed the child softly and carried her to their room.

C
HAPTER
F
IFTY-THREE

After saying good-night
, Andrea moved across the porch and looked out toward the lake. She had one finger pressed between the pages of a book to mark her place, though she was tired of reading beneath the dim wattage of the porch light. It didn’t matter. She had been reading from a collection of poems, and she knew this one by heart.

Downstairs I laugh, I sport and jest with all;

But in my solitary room above

I turn my face in silence to the wall;

My heart is breaking for a little love.

Christina Rossetti died alone, never having married. Some lives refuse to become love stories. Andrea knew this by now. Still, when she read this poem, when Christina’s voice rose up off the page and traveled through the years to live again in Andrea’s mind, Andrea was strangely comforted. She was in the company of lonely women, and there were many. Some, she knew, gave in to despair. Others, like Christina, waited, believing that though they would never fall in love in this life, they would fall wholly into love in the next. At least that seemed to be what Christina meant in the final lines of her poem.

Yet saith an angel: “Wait, and thou shalt prove

True best is last, true life is born of death,

O thou, heart-broken for a little love.

Then love shall fill thy girth,

And love make fat thy dearth,

When new spring builds new heaven and clean new earth.”

Andrea didn’t know what she thought about that.
Wishful thinking
, the skeptics might say.
A kettle of false hope.
She might have agreed once, having been ambivalent about God all her life. But now she wasn’t so sure.

Just last night, after the storm, she had kneeled beside John on the rocky shore. Rebekah was there, and Billy—all of them wet, cold, shivering, but they were alive. “Thank God,” she had said. John had looked up then, had pressed a gentle hand against her cheek.

She lifted her fingers now to her face, felt again the warmth of his moist skin against her own. “Thank God,” she’d said, and she had wanted there to be someone to receive her gratitude, someone who was not only watching over them from a distance, but who was right there with them on the rocky shore after the storm.

Maybe it was so, she thought. And maybe she had seen a miracle of sorts. Not just last night, when who knew but maybe the hand of God had been extended to them over the lake. But she was thinking too of tonight, of her children, the three of them calling out to each other, “I love you.”

Something had come to this small cottage, bringing with it a measure of healing. She hoped that whatever it was, it would stay. There were so many broken places to be healed.

John didn’t love her, but she wouldn’t allow herself to give in to despair. He would never love her, and he would probably never be faithful. She knew that. But maybe his faithlessness didn’t mean a loveless life, not while she had her children, not while there was the possibility of a loving God in heaven. She wanted to hope, the way the poet had hoped.

“Andrea? What are you doing?”

She gasped, startled, then looked back over her shoulder to find John standing in the doorway. He stepped fully onto the porch, the screen slamming behind him.

“I’m just—” What was she doing? She was trying to live without him, even though he was there. “I was reading, but it’s grown too dark to read now.”

“What are you reading?”

“Oh.” She tried to laugh. “A book of poems. It’s just something I’ve had a long time.”

“You like poetry?”

“Some. There are some poems I like.”

“That’s interesting. I never knew that.”

Andrea tilted her head. “Never knew what?”

“That you like poetry.”

“Well, yes . . .” Her voice trailed off. Her breath grew shallow and her jaw tightened as she waited for him to speak.

“Andrea,” he said at length. “We need to talk.”

So that was it, she thought. He might have picked a better time, at the end of a different day, or at least when the children weren’t home. She took a deep breath to steel herself. “Okay.”

He nodded toward the glider. “Want to sit down?”

She did. Her legs had suddenly grown weak. She joined him on the glider, settled the small volume of poetry on her lap. She folded her hands and kept her eyes downcast. Her heart leapt wildly in her chest. It was one thing to know; it was something altogether different to hear the words.

It’ll be all right
, she told herself.
You’ll manage. You always do.

When at last John spoke, he said, “I need to ask you to forgive me.”

She waited a moment, but when he didn’t say anything more, she asked, “For what, John?”

He sighed heavily. “The list is so long, I hardly know where to begin.”

She knew. She knew what was on that list, knew even better than John all the ways he had hurt her. But she said, “Whatever all of it is, none of it matters.”

“It does matter, Andrea. All of it.”

She tried to moisten her lips, but her tongue was dry. “Well, it’s all right, then,” she said quietly. “I forgive you.”

“Don’t say that yet, or it won’t really mean anything. Hear me out, all right?”

She lifted her shoulders lightly. “Okay.”

“You say you like poetry?”

“Yes. Some.”

“Have you ever read a poem called ‘The Hound of Heaven’?”

“ ‘The Hound of Heaven’?”

He nodded. She thought a moment, shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. What’s it about?”

“I’ll tell you. But at the same time, I want to tell you about what happened to me in prison. Can I do that?”

“I’ve been waiting all summer for you to tell me.”

To her surprise he reached over and unclasped her hands, pulling one into his own. She had forgotten what that was like, the simple act of holding John’s hand.